JOHNSTON — The town’s Municipal Court judge could ask police to find certain scofflaws and haul them before his bench during a special session of night court next month, according to the court’s administrator.

Mark Reynolds Journal Staff Writer mrkrynlds

JOHNSTON — The town’s Municipal Court judge could ask police to find certain scofflaws and haul them before his bench during a special session of night court next month, according to the court’s administrator, Richard Delfino.

Judge Michael DiChiro might not take that step, Delfino said Friday, but the necessary preparations are complete more than two months into the court’s push to resolve thousands of open court cases, including some that date from the early 1990s.

The defendants in these cases, mostly involving speeding and other driving offenses, never paid their fines and never showed up for court.

Since August, the court has mailed out notices in an initial effort to contact roughly 500 of these delinquents.

Those who received the notices, and read them, learned that they were expected in court, either on Aug. 20 or Oct. 3. Notices will soon go out to an additional 250 people who will be asked to either pay up or appear at the session scheduled for Nov. 21.

Each of the notices warns that failing to pay outstanding fines without appearing in court as scheduled will lead the judge to issue a civil arrest warrant to be handled by the Johnston Police Department.

At this point, the court is capable of moving forward with such action for a handful of delinquents who were targeted in the initial mailing and are believed to be living in Johnston, Delfino said.

Meanwhile, the court has negotiated the outlines of an agreement with a collection agency, which would pursue people whom the town failed to reach through the mail.

To go forward, the arrangement would need approval from Mayor Joseph M. Polisena.

Delfino said the collection agency’s efforts might be so successful that the town could simply put unresolved cases in the hands of the collection agency and forgo the new system that tries to force payment through mailed notices and court appearances.

Since the town began calling scofflaws into night-court sessions, it has recovered $60,000 of an estimated $750,000 in outstanding fines connected to about 5,000 cases.

Rather than focusing on people whose cases date back to the ’90s, the court’s latest push focuses on delinquents who committed offenses during the past two years, Delfino said.

“I think our collection count is going to be much higher this time around,” he said.